The Mystery of the Missing Railroad Track
A civil engineer's discovery threatens to derail the Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad's land claim in downtown Seattle.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The controversy regarding the 'Ram's Horn' right-of-way took a new turn yesterday. An affidavit filed in the clerk of court's office suggests the land claimed as the right-of-way by the Columbia & Puget Sound Railroad Company is not the actual right-of-way at all, and that the path lies significantly eastward of current assumptions. August Mehlhorn, owner of a saloon at Columbia and Post streets, had been halted by an injunction from building on land the railroad claimed. However, civil engineer R. H. Thomson swore in an affidavit that a survey made on May 17, 1892, shows the Northern Pacific track—which occupies part of the alleged right-of-way—sits 62.4 feet west of the true centerline. This places the actual track right across the path of Mehlhorn's proposed building and toward the MacDougall & Southwick building.
“It does not disconcert us or worry us in the least. We can prove our right to the land we claim by the plat and the right-of-way deed.”
Conflicts over land use and rights-of-way define the history of Seattle's downtown core, where overlapping claims and shifting surveys have long created civic friction. The area around Columbia and Post streets has been transformed many times since 1892, but the struggle to define property ownership in a growing city remains as pertinent today as it was during the city's early regrade era.
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